Writer’s Tip #76: Use a Photo to Develop Characters, Setting

When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

This tip was brought to mind by one of my readers. My current WIP is so far from its beginnings that I’d forgotten it started with photos to draw character profiles and Google Earth images to create the setting details. But it did. I remember browsing through internet images of paleoanthropologists, staring in their eyes to see if they were Kali or Zeke (my two main characters). Did they have her fragile spirit or his swash-buckling former SEAL-gone-scientist persona? Once I found the right image, I read everything I could find about that…